My living and working in high tech in Austin TX for most of my life has let me see how even minor events can massively affect fabless semiconductor companies.  Remember the Iceland volcano that shut down air travel in Europe for a week?  Remember the loss of Malaysia flight 370?  Remember the Fukushima tsunami?  Remember the Philippine typhoon that left six feet of standing water in every street of the country?  By themselves, each event was relatively isolated, but each left the semico supply chain reeling for months, if not years.

There are good reasons why Samsung put one of its biggest fabs near Austin, and is currently expanding to double its capacity.  There's effective transportation (air, rail, and highways) nearby; the weather isn't subject to whims and vagaries like hurricanes every year (occasional tornadoes not included); no foreign despots are hanging around to invade us (we home-grow our own here, thank you);  our limestone karst geology means we have earthquakes only once every million years; no active volcanoes nearby since 5 million years ago; an ample population of cheap, well-educated workers in the area -- and probably a few more strategic reasons I can't remember right now.

And the remark about pointy-headed bosses focusing on quarterly profit growth at the expense of all else was exactly correct.  Ever wonder what happened to Motorola? (think: spin off the most profitable bread-and-butter sectors to raise quarterly executive bonuses)  Ever wonder why nobody buys IBM nowadays except for hide-bound curmudgeonly Luddites?  (think: offshore customer support because 10 non-English speaking support techs getting paid USD$4 an hour are 10 times more productive than one support tech making USD$40 an hour).  

I'll stop now.  We know that here in the US, we're following the Russian corporate oligarchy model down the toilet, and only massive government payoffs can motivate our corporate status quo to do the right thing -- which is to JUST MAKE STUFF.  Hans, sitting in his home in Turkey, has the right idea and company model.  3M, who gave us sandpaper, PostIt notes, and scotch tape, has the right idea -- invent something, make a little, sell a little, invent something else brilliant and world-changing.   Michael Dell, who invented white-box computer manufacturing in his college dorm, had the right idea at first.  Too bad he dropped out of college before he got his degree.

Me?  The only really smart idea I ever had was to start adopting rescue bunnies.  

73

Jim N6OTQ